


Distance

by HarleySquadGirl



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Angst, Basically sad mammals in lots of food places, Cafe's, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 23:28:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7243177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarleySquadGirl/pseuds/HarleySquadGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were three months apart. Nick was use to letting go and Judy had a new found hero status to deal with. Yet there minds seem to be nowhere but on each other. So could they really keep away from each other for so long? Perhaps they were keeping tabs on each other but never finding the courage to talk. Perhaps it was their own way of remaining close to each other when they were feeling at their worst. This is a collection of those moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Like I'm obsessed with those three months they weren't together but like they had to still think about each other because well my heart couldn't take it any other way

Judy hated rain. It was the single burning thought that dragged her into the glowing café. A neon pink and blue beacon in the sudden storm that took over Zootopia. It was the hatred that had her slump into a corner booth, soggy ticket paper hanging out of her printer and a waterfall still pouring from her bowler hat.  She removed the hat and the orange atrocity from her shoulders as she tried to shake the water from her fur. The one thing that she should have been thankful for was that the summer meant that the rain wasn’t ice cold but rather a lukewarm. Yet the only thing that she seemed to be able to feel was even more hate.

 _Great,_ she thought _so at least I feel like I stepped out of a mediocre bath. I would have rather been cold than just wet, now not ever coffee can help me_. She grimaced and propped her head up on her paw as she stared out the window at the quickly empting streets. She was actually surprised more people weren’t in the café; this seemed like the type of place that blossomed in this type of weather. Yet the only mammals there beside her were a couple of dusty looking beaver construction workers at the counter and a stag with his nose stuck in a book on the other side of the restaurant.

Judy knew that there was no one hiding in the shadows, could clearly see out the window that no one else was approaching and yet she felt her heart drop a little bit. Why did she even have her hopes up in the first place? Did she really think that when the afternoon took this turn that he was really going to stop by like normal? She scoffed at herself and started to stack creamers absentmindedly, her hate boiling over onto herself. _Dumb bunny_ she scolded herself. It seemed that the only good thing about this whole situation was that she was at least feeling something again.

The whole two weeks since the press conference had felt like she had been watching her life through the lens of a horribly made action movie. Obliviously there was a plot and her character was motivated by something but no one, even herself, could tell the audience what that motivation was. Well maybe not that bad because there was something that Judy thought about to keep herself going. Nick. When she had been placed on meter maid duties again she hadn’t even objected, though Bogo was quick to tell her it was to give her a chance to lay low after solving such a big case.

Instead she was surprised to see that she had wondered over to the very haunts that she had first met him. She tried to convince herself it was all coincidence but she knew that from the very moment she was given the task that she wanted to end up here. To feel close to the fox and even though she wasn’t ready to confront him again, she wanted to know that he was alright. She had to know that he wasn’t just sleeping in some ditch too depressed to keep going. She also knew that she probably shouldn’t give herself so much credit but it still didn’t stop the pain of seeing him going about his normal routine. She didn’t want to admit that she had wanted him to seem just as upset as her, to be hung up on the whole argument as much as her, to be active in the repercussions of her words as much as her, to be as miserable as she was.

So instead she had done what for some reason seemed natural to her, she followed him. Of course her good cop training meant that she still had to do her job, she went to be a security job at protests and she wrote more tickets in a week than most cops did in a month, but she found herself in the same places at the same time everyday just to catch a glimpse of what Nick was doing with his life. She of course knew about his scams but what she was really interested in was what he did on his personal time. She felt horrible to say that she was actually surprised to how normal it all seemed.

He would grab a coffee from StarBucks in the morning. Walk around the park a few times before going to start that days scam. Take a short break at around noon to grab an unhealthy amount of candy to eat for his lunch. Back to work. Then before disappearing to wherever he called home he always made sure to stop by this café to seemingly flirt with the waitress and get one decent meal of day in. Which he quickly threw off balance by eating several slices of pie. She found blueberry to be his favorite and she found herself holding onto his sweet toothed nature to hold against him. Until her mind pulled her back down into reality to remind her that she was probably never going to be able to talk to him again.

It was all quite depressing to let mull around in that head of hers but Judy didn’t want to take it out on her poor waitress so when she heard footsteps approaching she did her best to sober up. “Welcome to Jack’s, sorry about the way sugar I didn’t even see you come in” the vixen said with a warm smile. She leaned against the opposite side of the booth, the baby blue of her dress perfectly coordinated with the hot pink of the booth. “Let me guess … some coffee and a nice chunk of carrot cake? It may not be cold out but I promise nothing feels better during a summer storm than some sweets,” she said with a comforting draw in her voice.

“Coffee sounds great but um I think I will go with the blue berry cobbler instead,” her words surprised her; she was never one to give up the opportunity to eat carrot cake. Even the worse of carrot cakes was her friend. Though she was sure she already knew the answer to her own question and slowly added “It’s my friend’s favorite.”

The vixen nodded and scribbled down the order and turning on her heel to make her leave but she stopped short and turned back around pointing her pen at Judy. “Now wait a minute I know you. You’re the bunny who found all those missing mammals a couple weeks ago,” she said shaking her pen in Judy’s direction.

Judy curled in on herself, trying to make herself seem as small as possible. She should have known that coming to a place with a mostly predator staff would have been a bad idea. She felt guilt wrap around her chest and squeeze. She was surprised that the fox hadn’t already called one of the large chefs she saw through the service window to come kick her out. “Yeah I am sorry I will just go ahead and leave then, here is for trying to help anyway” Judy said slipping a wet bill out of her pocket and leaving it on the table.

She expected a dreadful silence and glaring eyes to follow her to the exit but instead she found herself being tsked at. A soft well-manicured paw easily pushed her back into her seat and she saw her waitress looming above her with her hand on her hip. _Oh sweet cheese and crackers she is probably going to call everyone working here over to shame me, call every restaurant in a ten mile radius that I am looking for food so no one will serve me and I am going to deserve every minute of this humiliation. I better learn to love single shriveled carrots,_ Judy groaned, her mouth going instantly dry at the thought of the microwave dinners at home.

And for the second time since coming to Zootopia a fox surprised her. “Now I will not be having any of this pity party in my section. Nicky straightened me out real quick right after this whole thing happened so don’t go putting words in my mouth either. Now you just wait right here while I go grab that cobbler,” she said with much a similar tone that Judy’s mother would use when one of her many siblings would start whining. Judy gulped and nodded, quickly straightening out her posture and having the sudden feeling that she should be helping wash dishes somewhere.

She moved in the swift graceful style that servers always seemed to acquire and in the blink of an eye the vixen was gone and back again carrying a large pot of coffee, two mugs and what seemed to be half a cobbler with large scoops of ice cream on top. The girl, who Judy felt ashamed to just then look at her name tag to see that her name was Lacey, sat down across from her. “I needed to take a break for this shift anyway so now seemed a good a time as any. If there was anything my mom ever taught me was that one good food could work miracles and two that no one should ever be sad alone,” Lacy said in a soft voice, scooping up a large bite of cobbler “so start talking miss bunny.”

Judy gripped her mug in her paws, letting the hot coffee sting her delicate pads as if to prove to herself that this was real. That she was in fact sitting across from a fox, the species that she had come to most associate with all of the hate towards her lately, and was hearing nothing but kind words. “I just … I don’t get you are being so nice to me,” she finally said not allowing herself to share in the dessert that was obviously meant for two. No she didn’t deserve that, she didn’t deserve kindness and sweets.

Lacey gave an exhausted sort of laugh and shook her head as if she were dealing with a rather pesky toddler. “I believe I have already told you but maybe you didn’t hear me. And here I thought you bunnies were supposed to have good hearing,” she teased lightly, pushing a spoon closer to Judy’s paw. “But since you missed it, I am being nice to you because no one should be sitting here as sad as you for no good reason. Sure I was as mad as any predator when you first said, well you already know what you said, but Nicky told me a week after that you really weren’t a bad person. And I’ve seen you protecting all those activist, I actually saw you arrest some creep pig who went after one of them. So I guess it was that side that Nick saw when he worked with you, and he is a pretty good judge of character. You have to be to do what he does,” she smirked slightly taking a long sip of coffee. “The real question I have though is why you seem to think that you don’t deserve to be treated with kindness?”

The question caught Judy off guard. She had been too busy hung up on the idea that Nick had defended her. Even after what she had said, after she still choose to carry around that horrible spray with her after working close with him, after being so god damn ignorant, he still thought that she was a good person. She felt a twitch in her lips and muscles in her face that she hadn’t used in a while were straining. _Maybe there is a chance for you after all dumb bunny,_ she thought seeing a small glimmer of hope _but you sure have a hell of a way to go before you’ve even made a dent in the damage you have caused_.

“Well it’s just that,” Judy started before grabbing a few bites of the cobbler at last “I’ve caused a lot of trouble in this city. I wanted to save it, to protect it but it seems all that I have done is ripped out the seams so that its falling apart. And as bad as it seems I’ve actually been feeling even worse that I hurt Nick … I know that he shouldn’t be my first priority. I know that I need to focus on righting my wrongs before even thinking of going to him but well I got to thank you Lacey. I think you’ve given me the push that I need to make things right. I mean if he is already having thoughts of forgiving me then maybe I can really do this …” she said with a hint of her old self surfacing. The Judy who wanted to make the world a better place, the Judy who believed in Nick.

Her smile wavered though when she saw the odd expression on Lacey’s face. Judy blinked at her and suddenly felt that tension in the air that was present right before Nick had left her. Her heart started to feel like it wanted to squirm out of her chest. She held her breath waiting for the bomb to fall. “Judy I’m glad that you aren’t simmering over here in pity town any more but well forgiveness for actions and actually setting things right is very different.                                  

Judy felt her spirits fall again. It must have shown on her face because Lacey clasped her hands together and seemed to be choosing her next words very carefully. “I’m not telling you to stop fighting for what’s right, that would be just plain wrong, but I don’t want to give you false hope.  
You can have the whole world forgive you and still wouldn’t change the fact that there is a real demon in this city right now. And well when it comes to Nick, he would probably defend you to the teeth but that doesn’t mean that he wants you to go running back into his life.”

“B-but you said that he was defending me,” Judy could feel the heat of tears in the corner of her eyes now, why was it that every single ray of light she got had to suddenly be snatched from her “Doesn’t that mean that he wants to try and make things right too?” she asked in a defeated voice.

“Oh sweetie I have no doubt that is what Nick wants,” Lacey said her hands resting over her heart, as if the sights of another person being in pain made her feel just as bad. She seemed like that type of empathetic person and even given the circumstances Judy couldn’t help but admire it. “But Nick would rather gnaw his own foot off before giving into those feelings. Foxes are supposed to be stoic and sneaky and uncaring for anyone but their own kind. They aren’t supposed to let themselves be hurt by others and hurt was describing what he went through lightly. The night after that interview was when I saw Nick at his lowest. He doesn’t like to talk a whole lot about his personal life and I respect that but when he doesn’t talk at all. Well that’s when I know something is wrong because it shows that he let someone get to him.”

Judy covered her face with her paws, she was never good with this whole gray area stuff. She was a very black and white bunny, always thinking that there was only a right option and a wrong. The good choice and the bad choice but after coming to Zootopia she was learning that there was a whole spectrum of colors to choose from and there was no right color to choose. “Why is everything so hard?” she finally whispered with a small voice. Lacey seemed to have this all figured out or at least Judy wanted her to have it figured out.

“Sugar that’s life I’m afraid. Sometimes it’s what makes it good and well sometimes it means things can be tough. The only thing to do is to keep moving forward alright? I believe that good wants to be in the world, that whatever forces that see over this kind of thing don’t want hate to win. So don’t let it win over you okay? Everything takes time, the world … and Nick,” she added sweetly before being called back to work by a skunk girl at the cash register.

Lacey placed her paw on Judy’s shoulder and gave it one last squeeze before gathering up their dirty dishes leaving the bunny alone with her thoughts. Which was the last thing that Judy wanted to be left with, she felt as if hate was winning in her mind again. She hated feeling so close to hope, hated feeling so close to Nick and hated that the only thing she could do was really nothing. She liked to think that she never knew when to quit but she was starting to think that maybe Lacey had been right and that time was the answer to everything, including the answer to when she was going to quit. Maybe it really had only been a matter of time until she had to give up. And again she was feeling nothing but hate as she felt that she had been so close to everything she had wanted and yet she was farther than ever.

**Author's Note:**

> So I feel like my ending got kind of weak? Well I usually write fluff so this is new territory for me so I hope to improve in the next chapter which will be with Nick. And really I feel better writing for Nick than with Judy, idk why but thats why I wanted hers out of the way first. So let me know how to better the next chapter my leaving a comment and see you lovelies next time.


End file.
